Porsche will stop making diesel cars, focus on other technology

Sept. 23 (UPI) -- Porsche AG announced Sunday it no longer will manufacture cars with diesel engines in wake of the emission-cheating scandal involving its own models and parent company Volkswagen.

Porsche, which has been making the diesel engine version for 10 years, plans to concentrate on petrol/gasoline, hybrid and all-electric vehicles.

"Porsche is not demonising diesel," Oliver Blume, CEO of Porsche AG, said in a press release. "It is, and will remain, an important propulsion technology. We as a sports car manufacturer, however, for whom diesel has always played a secondary role, have come to the conclusion that we would like our future to be diesel-free."

By 2022, Porsche said in a press release it will have invested more than $6 billion in electric cars, which is calls e-mobility, in "creating the basis for sustainable growth into the future."

Porsche plans to bring its first purely electric sports car to the market in 2019 with the Taycan model.

And by 2025, every second new Porsche vehicle could have an electric drive -- hybrid or purely electric, the company said.

The sports car manufacturer also said it is concentrating on optimized internal combustion engines.

"Purist, emotional and powerful sports cars will thus continue to play an important role in the Porsche product portfolio," the company said.

"Our aim is to occupy the technological vanguard -- we are intensifying our focus on the core of our brand while consistently aligning our company with the mobility of the future."

Nearly 60,000 Porsche SUVs in Europe were recalled, a third of them in Germany, because of emissions cheating. Germany's Federal Transport Authority order affected Cayenne and Macan diesel vehicles.

Porsche had used diesel engines from Audi, another VW subsiduary.

"We have never developed and produced diesel engines ourselves," Blune said. "Nevertheless, Porsche's image has suffered. The diesel crisis caused us a lot of trouble."

Porsche's executives were allegedly aware of the so-called "defeat devices" being used by Audi engines to deliver misleading emissions figures during tests.

VW admitted to rigging diesel cars worldwide to fool emissions checks in a scandal widely known as "Dieselgate."

Soon after the Dieselgate scandal emerged in 2015, Porsche CEO Matthias Muller moved up to become head of VW, replacing the now-indicted Martin Winterkorn. Later Herbert Diess assumed leadership of VW.

Earlier this year in Germany, Volkswagen was fined $1.2 billion after a German public prosecutor found the company had sold more than 10 million cars with emissions-test cheating software installed between 2007 and 2015.

In addition, the company has allowed $35 billion to settle fines, compensation and buying back cars in the United States.

Last week, the European Union said it's investigating German automakers -- BMW, Daimler and Volkswagen -- for possibly colluding to limit development of emissions-saving technology on vehicles. The probe includes Volkswagen subsidiaries Audi and Porsche.

In Germany, diesel cars older than a certain age have been banned in some German cities in an attempt to reduce pollution.